Suspense

Introduction

In giving to his last, unfinished, novel the name of Suspense, Conrad chose a title even more symbolic than the haunting, breathless air of the narrative suggests. For the threads were snapped when the climax had still to be unfolded, when the characters had yet to come together in the harmony of completed action, and when the whole story hung, as it were, between the darkness and the dawn. The suspense will last forever.

Nobody could even faintly guess how the novel would have ended, though what he has left is itself the length of a considerable book. In that vast canvas, with its atmosphere of political intrigue and human passion, there are endless possibilities. It had almost reached the stage, in its wide, slow sweep, in which fate was about to catch up the people of the drama in a single net, but at the actual moment of the close we are still completely bewildered.

The secret will never be divulged and the title will never lose its appeal. On the day before he died, scarcely an hour before he was seized with his fatal illness, Conrad was speaking to me about Suspense. We had gone into his study after breakfast and, sitting there together, he told me how extraordinarily clear his brain felt, clearer than for months, and how soon he would be able to take up his work again. And by his work, his serious work, he meant Suspense. He had been writing it for a long time—indeed, The Rover was but an interlude suggested by the longer story—and he was anxious to have it completed. “I see five or six different lines of treatment,” he added, with that indrawn expression on his face which showed that he was thinking aloud. I did not press him for explanations; I listened, as I had so often listened before, to his cryptic reveries. In due time, I thought, all will be made clear. I was mistaken.

My own impression is that Conrad regarded Suspense as, in all probability, his final book. I do not mean that he did not talk of other future books, for he did; but I do mean that he felt that death was near, and that he hoped, at least, to finish this long-pondered novel of Napoleonic times. During recent months he had often spoken to me of his death: he was conscious of its approach, and his earnest desire was to round off this last great effort of his imagination.

The wish was not fulfilled, and yet Suspense, with its splendid qualities of creation and atmosphere, is a very different thing from some of the uncompleted works left by men of genius. A fragment—yes; but a huge fragment, full of power and fire, a fragment that will take its place among the recognized masterpieces of this remarkable man.

All his life Conrad was a student of the Napoleonic era. He had absorbed the history, the memoirs, the campaigns of that period with immense assiduity and unflagging interest, and into Suspense he poured the wealth of his acquired knowledge and the force of his coordinating imagination. It reads perfectly as an authentic and vivid recreation of that feeling which overshadowed southern Europe while Napoleon was in Elba, and of the suspense which hung, like a cloud, upon the world. This novel was, in a very special way, the child of his affection. It had been in his mind for years, it took shape gradually, and the very burden of it soothed, with the vision of its concrete emergence, the weariness and ill-health of his later days.

It is tragic to think that he did not live to finish it, but he has left sufficient to turn defeat into victory and to temper our sorrow with an emotion of triumph. And perhaps its very incompleteness adds to the sense of mystery which enshrouds its pages, giving to this mighty fragment a more august significance than could be found in the pellucid beauty of a finished work of art. The exotic, moving quality in Conrad’s gift is brought home to us impressively by his sudden passing away with this last mystery unsolved. He came to us, fully armed for his task, a mysterious figure: he departed as suddenly and as silently; and it seems somehow fitting that he should have left behind him, not alone the ample accomplishment of his high genius, but, so to speak, a witness to the abiding mystery of his fascinating and enigmatic personality.

Part I

I

A deep red glow flushed the fronts of marble palaces piled up on the slope of an arid mountain whose barren ridge traced high on the darkening sky a ghostly and glimmering outline. The winter sun was setting over the Gulf of Genoa. Behind the massive shore the sky to the east was like darkening glass. The open water too had a glassy look with a purple sheen in which the evening light lingered as if clinging to the water. The sails of a few becalmed feluccas looked rosy and cheerful, motionless in the gathering gloom. Their heads were all pointing towards the superb city. Within the long jetty with the squat round tower at the end, the water of the harbour had turned black. A bigger vessel with square sails, issuing from it and arrested by the sudden descent of the calm, faced the red disc of the sun. Her ensign hung down and its colours were not to be made out; but a lank man in a shabby sailor’s jacket and wearing a strange cap with a tassel, who lounged with both his arms thrown over the black breech of an enormous piece of ordnance that with three of its monstrous fellows squatted on the platform of the tower, seemed to have no doubt of her nationality; for to the question of a young civilian in a long coat and Hessian boots and with an ingenuous young countenance above the folds of a white neckcloth he answered curtly, taking a short pipe out of his mouth but not turning his head.

“She’s Elban.”

He replaced his pipe and preserved an unsociable air. The elegant young man with the pleasant countenance, (who was Cosmo, the son of Sir Charles Latham of Latham Hall, Yorkshire), repeated under his breath, “Elban,” and remained wrapped up in still contemplation of the becalmed ship with her undistinguishable flag.

It was not till the sun had sunk beneath the waters of the Mediterranean and the undistinguishable flag had been hauled down on board the motionless ship that he stirred and turned his eyes towards the harbour. The nearest prominent object in it was the imposing shape of an English line-of-battle ship moored on the west side not far from the quay. Her tall spars overtopped the roofs of the houses and the English ensign at her flagstaff had been just hauled down and replaced by a lantern that looked strange in the clear twilight. The forms of shipping crowded towards the head of the harbour were merging into one another. Cosmo let his eyes wander over the circular platform of the tower. The man leaning over the gun went on smoking with indifference.

“Are you the guardian of this tower?” asked the young man.

The other gave him a sidelong glance and made answer without changing his attitude and more as if speaking to himself:

“This is now an unguarded spot. The wars are over.”

“Do they close the door at the bottom of this tower at night?” enquired Cosmo.

“That is a matter worth consideration especially for those like you, for instance, who have a soft bed to go to for the night.”

The young than put his head on one side and looked at his interlocutor with a faint smile.

“You don’t seem to care,” he said. “So I conclude I need not. As long as you are content to stay here I am safe enough. I followed you up the stairs, you know.” The man with the pipe stood up abruptly. “You followed me here? Why did you do that, in the name of all the saints?”

The young man laughed as if at a good joke. “Because you were walking in front of me. There was nobody else in view near the Mole. Suddenly you disappeared. Then I saw that the door at the bottom of the tower was open and I walked up the stairs on to this platform. And I would have been very surprised if I hadn’t found you here.”

The man in the strange cap ornamented with a tassel had taken his pipe out of his mouth to listen. “That was all?”

“Yes, that was all.”

“Nobody but an Englishman would behave like that,” commented the other to himself, a slight appearance of apprehension passing over his features. “You are an eccentric people.”

“I don’t see anything eccentric in what I’ve done. I simply wanted to walk out of the town. The Mole was as good as any other part. It is very pleasant here.”

A slight breeze touched the two men’s faces, while they stood silent, looking at each other. “I am but an idle traveller,” said Cosmo easily. “I arrived this morning by land. I am glad I had the idea to come out here to behold your town glowing in the sunset and to get a sight of a vessel belonging to Elba. There can’t be very many of them. But you, my friend …”

“I have as much right to idle away my time here as any English traveller,” interrupted the man hastily.

“It is very pleasant here,” repeated the young traveller, staring into the dusk which had invaded the platform of the tower.

“Pleasant?” repeated the other. “Yes, perhaps. The last time I was on this platform I was only ten years old. A solid round shot was spinning and rattling all over the stone floor. It made a wondrous disturbance and seemed a living thing full of fury.”

“A solid shot!” exclaimed Cosmo, looking all over the smooth flagstones as if expecting to see the traces of that visitation. “Where did it come from?”

“It came from an English brig belonging to Milord Keith’s Squadron. She stood in quite close and opened fire on us. … Heaven only knows why. The audacity of your people! A single shot from one of those big fellows,” he continued, slapping the enormous bulging breech of the gun by his side, “would have been enough to sink her like a stone.”

“I can well believe it. But the fearlessness of our seamen has ceased to astonish the world long ago,” murmured the young traveller.

“There are plenty of fearless people in the world, but luck is even better than courage. The brig sailed away unscathed. Yes, luck is even better than courage. Surer than wisdom and stronger than justice. Luck is a great thing. It is the only thing worth having on one’s side. And you people have always had it. Yes, signore, you belong to a lucky nation or else you would not be standing here on this platform looking across the water in the direction of that crumb of land that is the last refuge of your greatest enemy.”